Ben & Jerry’s “Schweddy Balls”

GlobalPost
The World

The best entrepreneurs find business opportunities everywhere.

According to Vermont ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's, that now includes the money-making potential of puerile humor — the beloved domain of 8-year-olds and journalists everywhere.

Behold the company's newest appetizing ice cream flavor: Schweddy Balls.

Here's how Ben & Jerry's describes it:

"Vanilla ice cream with a hint of rum and loaded with fudge covered rum malt balls."

Photo credit: Ben & Jerry's

The name is an homage to a classic Saturday Night Live sketch that featured Alec Baldwin on an NPR-like radio broadcast, hawking his holiday cookies called Schweddy Balls.

Here's the clip:

Baldwin, naturally, had a comment about the new flavor.

Here's a statement he released, as reported by the Mail Online:

"For a long time, I thought that 'Here Lies Pete Schweddy' would end up on my tombstone. Now, thanks to Ben & Jerry's, the goodness of the Schweddy family recipe won't go with me to the great beyond. It is immortalized here, right now, and it's an ice cream. Ben & Jerry's and Schweddy. Two great names in American dessert, together at last."

Co-Schweddy skit castmate Ana Gasteyer added: "As a person and a performer, I am a sucker for holiday balls. And I have no doubt this ice cream will cause many to scream "Good Times."

It's not the first time Ben & Jerry's has capitalized on popular culture to make a buck.

It has hawked One Sweet Whirled with the Dave Matthews Band and Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream, which it markets — in full Colbert Report mode — as "the sweet taste of liberty in your mouth."

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